I obviously don't know the full details, but I think it was probably just a standard letter that gets sent out if you don't pay your subs by a set date.

I know that for our club, the membership secretary tries to contact recently active members to chase up the subs before sending out letters etc, but for very large clubs I can see that this wouldn't be feasible. I suspect that if your injury kept you away from the club recently (and no one knew this fact), that they may have assumed that you had just given up.

seren nos yn canu I take forever to type and my English is not too good so bear with me. Thinking about it now maybe i should have contacted someone . i don't do Facebook but i do receive a monthly newsletter so i suppose the mistake in the first place was mine.

Stevie G - I am also a member of a local club who are my number one club. They have all known me for many years so it would never happen there. The letter was sent by my second claim club who are a national club where i am not so well known.

I think i'll give them the benefit of the doubt this time with a years probationery period . There are so many wonderful people at the club it would be a loss to me just to walk away.

Must be a pain to be a membership secretary though........forever chasing people up..I suppose they just get pissed off in the end.people know when they are due.they probably put infor on the website and then put it in the newsletter as well.If people want to be part of the club then they only have one cheque to worry about.......

but agree that the wording could be nicer.but maybe they decided that if people do not pay be a certain date then they will not chase them up... just let them go..and remind them that without payment they can not benefit form any of the club membership rights...

Maybe the chap earlier was right then... a big faceless national club probably can't do it softly softly.

Why the 2nd claim club by the way?

My experience of this is that it's pretty pointless. You can't count in a team for the 2nd claim club unless it's a closed league, and as it sounds like your 1st claim are local, and thus you'd train with them, why need a 2nd club?

Seren nos yn canu. - I can be a bit silly at times as far as dates and times go. I thought i was only a few days late when the letter arrived but it turned out i was 3 and a half months late. I should have taken care to read all of the newsletters but they are very long and I am not much cop with computors.

Stevie G. I just wanted to broaden my horizens. I'm not bothered about points or prizes. I did not join them for that. I've got to know some of the runners on my travels up and down the country and found them to be truely amazing people. When they said to me that i should join their club i did give it plenty of thought at first then after a few years of thinking i decided to join. I think it is a smashing club .

Stevie G - I am also a member of a local club who are my number one club. They have all known me for many years so it would never happen there. The letter was sent by my second claim club who are a national club where i am not so well known.

I think i'll give them the benefit of the doubt this time with a years probationery period . There are so many wonderful people at the club it would be a loss to me just to walk away.

I am not normally one to spread discourse but, on the face of it, I think you are being extremely generous of spirit.

Some membership secretaries (not just running clubs) seem to be so wrapped up in themselves that they seem unable to see that ordinary people have ordinary lives that doesn't revolve around the club.

Run Wales.....membership secretaries have their own lives to live..all everyone needs to do is give them their money and then the secretaries job is to fill in the paperwork and make sure everything is as it should be.....

Their job should not have to be running after adults who are acting like kids forgetting to pay because they are busy or can't be arsed to pay ..Memberships secretaries are not supposed to have to be members mothers.. wiping their arses and cleaning up after adults who can't do the simple job of paying what they owe ever year

As a commercial writer can I just add that some people just have poor written communication skills and that the person that wrote it might not have intended the tone of the letter to come across as it did.

That said, I would have imagined you should have received a reminder first and there's no reason why all this can't be done by email in any case. You send one mail, copy everybody in, job done. Surely that can't be much of a drain on anybody's time?

Best guess is that someone may well have been putting gentle reminders out on facebook or the club website for a while and, getting no response sent the letter which translated probably read ' well if you dont want to be in our gang then we did not want you anyway'.

It is the assumption that 'most people I know are on face book therefore all are' which is flawed. Assumptions of one size fits all are not good. One gentle reminder by post should really have come before this one.

With me the one size fits all assumptions that dont apply are that I own a car and can arrive at a 9:00 start race on a Sunday before public transport starts running and that I wish to give my bank details on line rather than send off a cheque.

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